Tag: dog food

This should be the final post on this; I wanted to share my final thoughts. The dogs have been eating no kibble for a month and a half now. We’ve been adjusting upward from our last estimate of 5.8# per day. I don’t know exactly how much we’re feeding now, but we’re ignoring the numbers and feeding them by their response. If I were to guess, it’d probably be closer to 7# total now.

Winston, my German Shepherd, has lost some weight, but he’s been a lot more active the past couple of weeks with the improving weather. We’re adding more food for him. Mint the heeler, on the other hand, seems to be foraging for quite a bit of her food and is not really interested in what we feed her. Winston is glad to clean up what she leaves so we’ll stay where we’re at for her. Continue reading “Day 40-Something No Kibble”→

This is going so well I don’t really know what to write. We’re mixing the same mix of 30% oats, 30% veggies and 40% meat, along with milk, eggs and herbs. They might end up too fat at this rate but they sure love it. I think when you find the right method, you just know it, and this is totally the way we should be feeding our dogs. Continue reading “Days 20-23 No Kibble, Free Meat is Great!”→

Yesterday was a great shopping day! We happened to go in on a 20% off natural foods day, which included the bulk bins. I was able to negotiate a 20% discount on a 50-pound bag of rolled oats (it wasn’t in the sale section) for the dogs, so I only paid $30, which is $.60 per pound and less than we would have paid at Azure if Azure had bothered to have it in stock, which they didn’t…again.

Since we were in the bulk section, I stumbled upon massive cans of pumpkin, over 6 pounds for around $6.50, so we bought two of those. Frozen veggies were on sale for $1 per pound and we got 12 of those. Even with all the dog food, we only came out over budget for groceries $22. Our current budget is $100 a week, so we did pretty good I think. Continue reading “Day 19 No Kibble, Getting Smart Edition”→

Day 17

We made a big enough batch yesterday of the oats/chicken/mixed veggies to feed everyone for morning.

Winston was a bit reluctant, but sometimes he’s just weird. After a few seconds of staring at it, he started in and ate it all. Mint ate all but one bite of hers. As Rob and I were talking, we remembered they’ve found a deer carcass and have been bringing back parts, so they probably aren’t overly hungry right now.

Halo the Maremma was not overly eager to eat his, either. That’s not a good start to this method.

We forgot to pull out meat for dinner and there was enough leftover from the previous batch to feed the house dogs, so I added in leftovers, some bread slices and an egg for everyone. It came out to enough for all four and they ate it eagerly. Maybe this will be easier!

Day 18

I made up a new batch for breakfast this morning. I have to say this method just feels so much better, like it’s the right way to do things. Mixing it all together makes so much more sense to me and seems to be more palatable to the dogs. It also takes a lot less time since we can make a batch for the whole day in about the same time as mixing up the regular morning cereal.

For this meal, I mixed 2.3 pounds of fresh turkey, 30 ounces of old fashioned rolled oats, 4 cups of milk, 1 can of canned pumpkin, 3/4# frozen mixed vegetables, 4 eggs, a couple glugs of flaxseed oil and a tablespoon or so each of dried nettles and red raspberry leaf. Everyone dove in and gobbled it up. I can’t tell you how happy it makes me to see them thoroughly enjoying their meals.

Winston’s red skin is greatly diminished. It’s still too pink, but definitely getting better. From here on out, if he seems to have trouble, I don’t feel like it’s going to be a big difficulty to simply adjust the amount of grains down a bit and increase the vegetables and meat. It’s what we were trying to do before, but with a formula to follow that makes it so much easier.

Free Turkey!

Two days ago someone tagged me in a post on Facebook for a free turkey who was aggressive to other birds. He dressed out at about 15 pounds, what a blessing! I’m saving the feathers for arrow fletching, they’re beautiful.

I’ve been increasingly unsettled about the results of this method, which is heavy on grain.

It’s also been a very time-intensive process. We have to remember to get the grain soaking the night before and also in the morning for evening feeding on the meatless days. We’re finding that the cereal is not being well received by anyone anymore. I think we might have been overfeeding the LGDs, but the house dogs have hated the cereal from early on so it’s been a lot of struggling to find something they’ll take to. Continue reading “Day 16 No Kibble, Scrapping the Levy Method”→

After yesterday’s strangeness, I increased the morning meal for the house dogs. They got 3 cups of milk, 2 cups of rolled oats, a half cup of dried zucchini, 2 eggs and some herbs: nettles and spirulina. They ate it quickly and acted hungry, so I added a scoop each of the LGDs’ barley cereal. They ate that quickly too, so I gave them each a scoop of our leftover spaghetti. At that, they seemed satisfied, finally! That sure seems like a lot, but I feel like at this point we need to be ignoring the numbers completely and just watching the dogs.

Today was the day after a fast and I’m not sure if that’s what happened, but when Rob fed the LGDs, a fight started between Mint the house heeler and Blaze the LGD. We’d already fed the house dogs but in hindsight, I think it wasn’t enough after a fast day.

Breakfast for the house dogs was a pint of milk with a cup of quick oats and about half a pound of vegetables, with 2 eggs whisked in. Our target daily food weight for the house dogs is 3.15# and this came to about a pound altogether. Perhaps they need a heavier meal in the morning and a lighter meal at night. Continue reading “Day 13 No Kibble”→

I’m not so sure Blaze isn’t getting enough to eat. Between the two LGDs, they’re sharing 3 dry pounds of barley soaked in milk and water with three-quarters of a pound of vegetables in the morning, and at least that much again at night or the equivalent in meat. They’re only supposed to need about 5.5 pounds. I’ll keep up this amount for now and watch their condition.

We’ll add more eggs when the eggs start coming on. My flock of 25 +/- hens is probably not going to be enough for our family, the pigs and the dogs. And to think, I had 70 hens last spring and sold down to this number! Continue reading “Day 12 No Kibble”→

It’s time to re-evaluate how much they’re eating. We were aiming for about 8# of feed for all of the dogs, which was pretty close. If you assume a 3% of body weight daily feed goal, it looks like this:

Breakfast for the house dogs was the hamburger/veggie/milk/brown rice mixture from the night before. They ate it without hesitation, hooray!

For the big dogs, more barley cereal with milk and veggies.

When we started this, I had absolute faith in the wisdom of Levy’s writing. I don’t doubt at all that this worked extremely well for her, but as I watch my house dogs struggling with what I presume is the amount of starches in the barley, I think some dogs already on a Western diet of kibble may not be able to go straight into that sort of diet. I don’t know why the LGDs are doing so well while the house dogs do so poorly, but I have to admit it leaves me concerned about the high amount of barley for everyone. Continue reading “Day 10 No Kibble”→

As of now, the dogs have been without kibble for eight full days. I have gone this long before feeding various things, such as raw, our leftovers, etc., so there is nothing terribly out of the ordinary about this length of time. One thing I notice is that Winston the vaccine injured German Shepherd’s coat is getting noticeably shinier again. This morning, he began scratching, which is what has stopped us every time we’ve tried before. Continue reading “Day 9 No Kibble”→

Today’s breakfast did not go over well. I put a little bit of apple cider vinegar in the normal barley cereal and I think that’s what turned the house dogs off of it. Still no problem with the LGDs (if only my kids were as easy to feed!)

I’ve noticed the house dogs seem a bit depressed. They’ve never seemed to like the barley, so perhaps I need to switch them over to the rolled oats instead. I’ll buy a bag on our next trip into town, because the human organic ones are too expensive to feed. Continue reading “Day 8 No Kibble”→

I forgot when writing the day 5 update that yesterday was the fast day, so they didn’t eat yesterday. No one seemed to mind much. Sunday is also our sabbath so it was a nice break to not spend time feeding the dogs. It takes a decent amount of time to gather, mix and distribute the ingredients, especially since we’re still figuring out what we’re doing. I’m looking forward to settling into a routine. Continue reading “Day 7 No Kibble”→

POOOP! I guess when Levy says the hours overnight are “strongly eliminative,” she means that quite literally. Winston, evidently showing us what he thinks of this whole thing, made a point to come upstairs to our bedrooms to poop in the middle of the night. He never goes in the house. And Mint had another mess as well.

I’m not sure if we should adjust the timing of meals, but I suspect that will be the answer. The house dogs are always hungry first thing in the morning, so perhaps we will feed them at our breakfast and dinner times, especially since I’m already soaking the cereal grains overnight and they’d be sufficiently softened by then.Continue reading “Day 5 of No Kibble”→

We soaked barley overnight in a mix of goat milk, water and the juice strained from plain cooked white beans. First thing this morning, I scooped a scoop into each house dog’s bowl and they both ate it without any trouble. This cereal had a whole quart of goat milk instead of yesterday’s pint, plus the bean broth. It also had no vegetables or herbs in it yet, so I’m not sure which factor convinced the house dogs to try it.

I had intended to feed the barley mix only to the big dogs, so there wasn’t enough for the house dogs too. I added their portion but in oats instead of barley to the barley mix, then a pound of organic peas, raspberry leaves and turmeric. The smell of this stuff is incredibly appealing to me, but not to anyone else. I wonder what my body is missing!

When we do our next pallet order of minerals, I want to save up enough to buy a few bags of Thorvin kelp to add to the dog food. Kelp is something Levy advocates to use every day and it’s what we feed the rest of our animals (New Country Organics minerals contain a large portion of kelp). I’m also looking forward to being able to harvest enough nettles this year to carry them through year round, but right now we have only a tiny amount left. Come on, spring!Continue reading “Day 4 of No Kibble”→

The house dogs definitely do not like the rolled barley. The midday feeding was largely ignored. I tried to snap you a photo of Winston the German Shepherd’s imploring stare when I put his bowl down in front of him, but he sidled up to lean his head into my belly, the serious begging, so I couldn’t get a picture.

The mix this morning was only a pint of milk; increased bottle baby demands and a hellacious cold snap decreasing supply is making a hard time of things. We’re defrosting last year’s frozen milk for tomorrow’s dog food.

I mixed up barley, milk, water, flaxseed oil, nettles, dried yellow summer squash, fresh carrots and an egg for each house dog and topped it with a slice of sourdough. It sat largely untouched for most of the day.Continue reading “Day 3 of No Kibble”→

We’ve begun feeding our dogs an exclusively homemade diet; no kibble. Read the first part here. I’m going to try to update regularly for the first month or so or as long as there’s anything noteworthy to add.

Yesterday marked the second full day of no kibble. The LGDs were quite hungry and excited for their morning oat cereal and they ate it down quickly. The house dogs also ate it quickly.

The evening meal brought some changes. Being the second night, we weren’t feeding meat so they got another round of cereal. We had gone to the feed store earlier so this meal was rolled barley instead of our human rolled oats. The texture is thicker and doesn’t appear to soak up liquids as well. We also included more vegetables. It was not well received by anyone, but the LGDs ate it quickly enough. The house dogs took longer and there was a little bit left over this morning when we woke up.Continue reading “Day 2 of No Kibble”→

We’re still in the early stages of being 100% kibble free and making our own dog food, so I’ll continue to update this post as the details become clearer.

Prior to making the switch, we were spending $4.55 per day for dog food, which gives us quite a bit of cost to work with. If we pay the same amount but feed them homemade food instead, I’d count it a win for the health benefits.

How Much To Feed Per Day?

Juliette de Bairacli Levy says a healthy collie adult should eat 2 pounds per day with this method. Collies average 60 pounds full grown. Our four dogs average 66 pounds, but LGDs eat less for their weight than other dogs their size. We’ve been averaging about 6 pounds of kibble per day (fed free choice) before switching so I’m basing our current rations on that and will adjust both the ration and this article if things change considerably. Levy also mentions dogs eat less on this diet than on an “unnatural diet.”Continue reading “Cost of Making Homemade Dog Food”→

For years now I have wanted to get away from kibble in my dogs’ diets.It is unnatural, laden with chemicals and filled with things we wouldn’t necessarily choose to feed ourselves.I have a six year old German Shepherd who, after having mandatory vaccines to be boarded one year, has suffered off and on with skin conditions and nervous issues.He is sensitive to foods and has never seemed to regain full health after his ordeal.It is mainly for him that we are finally jumping into feeding dogs naturally, with no kibble.

The thing that has held me back from making this move is the many conflicting recommendations on how best to feed dogs homemade food.On one end of the spectrum you have the raw camp saying that dogs must only eat raw meats, bones and offal and nothing else.On the other end is a personal hero, Paul Gautschi of Back to Eden fame, who is feeding his dogs only fruits, vegetables and eggs all grown on his property.His dogs are sleek, healthy and vibrant, a sure testament to the fact that dogs do not need meat to thrive. With so many opinions, it’s easy to get caught up in indecision.Continue reading “Our Journey Begins: Ditching Dog Food”→